Fujito, from the series "One Hundred No Dramas (Nogaku hyakuban)"

Tsukioka Kogyo's Fujito, from the series One Hundred No Dramas (Nogaku hyakuban), is a Meiji woodblock print dated 1893 and held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The print depicts a moment from the noh play Fujito, which dramatises an episode from the Genpei wars. The warrior Sasaki Moritsuna, granted the province of Kojima after the battle, encounters a mother whose son he had killed at the strait of Fujito, and the play unfolds through her grief, his confession, and the rites that release the dead. Kogyo's noh-e composition presents the principal performer in the patterned costume and mask of the role, holding the still posture of the dance against the bare planks and painted pine of the noh stage. As Yoshitoshi's pupil, Kogyo brought the strict figure drawing of the late [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) tradition to his career as the leading visual chronicler of the classical stage, and the discipline of that line is visible in the careful contour and proportion of the figure here. The Nogaku Hyakuban project, surveying one hundred noh dramas, formed the basis for the more thorough Nogaku Zue series he would pursue across the rest of the 1890s. The carving translates the textile patterns of the costume into precise blocks of pigment, and the printing maintains the muted ground appropriate to performance documentation. Documentation for this impression appears in the Art Institute of Chicago's online catalogue.